La pintura renacentista en la antigua Diócesis de Cartagena1514-1570

Resumen

Subsequently, during a short but intense time of study in the Museo de Arte Sacro de Orihuela, it came to life the idea of a catalogue raissonne' regarding the city's Renaissance artworks were still waiting for a rightful and complete study. Analyzing all the study elements, Orihuela was not but the iceberg's tip in the comprehensive pictorial overview of Murcian in the XVI century. The artistic reality of the ancient diocese of Cartagena -Murcia, Orihuela y Albacete- during the XVI century renaissance period has been one of the most considerable problems of the local history of art. The most recent studies aim to increase the knowledge of the said period and bring to light the complex overview to place artistic personalities, aesthetic influences, and precise attributions of the artworks produced during this period, which traces have been lost during the years and the coming of new art movements. Thanks to the number of documents kept in the different archives of the area, today we can confirm that Murcia, and Albacete, and Orihuela, in a minor way, have been city enriched by a great artistic activity during the first part of XVI century, which has been characterized by the followers of Hernando de Llanos pictorial school, along with painters as Andrés de Llanos, Juan de Vitoria or the Lanza family. This tendency to Italianise will gradually evolve following the fashion and the taste of the society, until, yet in the third quarter of the century, we can witness a stylistic revolution lead by a new generation of artists coming from all corners of the reign and fully educated as painting masters. The Italian inspired Renaissance will come to Murcia during the second decade of the XVI century, with Hernando de Llanos's artistic figure, Leonardo Da Vinci's former collaborator in the now lost Battle of Anghiari in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. This moment will set a before and after in the Mercian painting, just as the arrival of Llanos meant the introduction of a great artist with a pioneering style and a lot of public support. Nevertheless, after the death of Hernando, a variety of artists followed his leading star with more or less fortune, pursuing a successful painting style but now adapted to the local taste. A common element, about these artists but also the ones that will follow, is that the artist workshops established themselves in Murcia during the XVI century, from where they would serve all the neighboring cities such as Orihuela and Albacete, creating an interregional system that would spread through the whole ancient Diocese of Cartagena. The period of social, economic, and artistic crisis that will take over the region in the second half of the XVI century, in particular from 1570, will produce a generalized stagnation of the painting, of which will take advantage artists as Artis Tizón and Jerónimo de Córdoba to settle as painters in the Mercian capital.